A forgotten migration and citizenship experience: First generation immigrant women and The Netherlands Union of Women from Turkey

Despite acknowledging the feminization of immigration there are a few studies giving immigrant and ethnic minority women greater visibility within receiving country context and using gender as an analytic concept in migration researches. Particularly, there is a tendency that women’s migration has still been acknowledged as “dependant” or “secondary” migratory movement in guest worker regimes’ traditional “family reunion” schemas and issues such as immigrant women’s participation in labour markets, politics and citizenship have been ignored. In this article, I aim to examine immigrant women’s role especially in community services and citizenship struggles focusing on Hollanda Türkiyeli Kadınlar Birliği (The Netherlands Union of Women from Turkey) founded in 1974 and participant women’s experiences. This study is based on a larger fieldwork conducted in 2007-2008 in the Netherlands including in-depth interviews with women who were previously active in HTKB and the data review from HTKB archives. In the introduction chapter, I review gender and migration relationship in literature. Inthe second chapter, I focus on first generations Turkish immigrant women’s experiences in labour market and community organization in Dutch context and following chapter specifically their experiences in HTKB. Finally, from the vantage point of immigrant women’s experiences, the article concludes with critics on current political frameworks in the Netherlands based on a neoliberal citizenship perspective that construct immigrant women as a “problem category”.